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Starting today Sunday, I'm sending out my Sunday Series to Paid Subscribers. As a thank you, but also to treat them with something extra and (hopefully) nice. For others, I will be posting new material almost every day. Do sign up to my posts on Substack. And if you have the extra buck or two become a special subscriber. The photo up above is my life imagined but in reality it's Georges Simenon writing one of his daily novels with a child and playhouse in the living room. My home is almost like this! -

Tosh Berman

The Sunday Series; Sunday December 27, 2015

The Sunday Series:

Sunday December 27, 2015

Ah, the last Sunday of the year 2015.  A series of moments for me to reflect on all my successes and of course, failures.   Oddly enough, it’s the failures that capture my imagination and attention.   The successes would be perfectly OK, if it wasn’t for the nagging failures that pretty much spells out T.O.S.H. To bring lightness, let’s think of the successes this year.   Synesthesia Press put out my short piece from the “365” series (which I wrote everyday in the year 2014) as well as a short story published by Thistle & Weed Press, in conjunction to the Terry Braunstein exhibition that is taking place at the Long Beach Museum of Art.   So since I left Book Soup (a book store in West Hollywood)  three years ago, I have produced two books under my name, (“Sparks-Tastic” and “The Plum in Mr. Blum’s Pudding”) as well as a short story for the 3AM Magazine website out of London, and critical reviews published by Byron Coley in his zine/magazine Bull Tongue Review.   Through my press, TamTam Books, I have published Jacques Mesrine’s ‘The Death Instinct” and Lun*na Menoh’s “A Ring Around The Collar.” This is all, of course, great. 

The bad news is I’m on the collapse of financial disaster.   This past week I had to fire both my valet and butler.   I began by paying them a weekly check, which slowly turned to free food for them in the fridge.   Now that the food had disappeared from the refrigerator, they have disappeared as well.  I guess we can now sell the fridge, or turn the huge icebox into a bookshelf with a heavy door.   In fact, the kitchen has been transformed into a library.   Antique dishes have been sold through ebay and craigslist, and in the drawer that once had a kitchen utensil, now holds old issues of Mojo Magazine.   Since the gas has been cut off, we have one electric pot to heat up water for delicious cups of hot water while staring out the window on a cloudless evening.   My sweetie and I like to take one spoon we have, and stir the water till it becomes lukewarm, and comment to each other on our state of stress. 

It gets chilly in the winter night, and the cold draft tends to cut right through our summer clothing.  We often have to cut up our furniture and throw it into our fireplace to stay warm.  As we move the (what’s left of it) couch and place it by the one flickering flame at the base of the chimney, we tend to remember old folk songs from the 1930s dust bowl era.  Life was often simpler than now and not only that, but the people in the black and white images looked simple as well.  Due to the photographs I have seen from that era and subject matter, it is all gray and at times it’s gray on top of gray, which makes it into a super gray.  I don’t recall ever seeing a color photograph of the Okies traveling West bound.  I often wondered if they wore bright color shirts or pants.  My image is of them is wearing gray clothing, or perhaps their actual clothing lost color due to the various dust storms that they came upon them on a regular basis.  

Looking at my own life, I clearly saw the areas where I made the wrong turn.  Yet, in my own fashion, I totally ignored the direction I was heading towards, due to a great belief in my ability to write a bestseller or two.  That my friends, didn’t happen.  I wrote a lot of words.  My diary, “I Go With My Moods, ” one of my many writing projects for the year 2015 is over 85,000 words.  Yet, even though my computer screen is full of my words, it hasn’t produced any capital, in other words, currency.   

We rarely go out.  Our existence is somewhere between Turner and Jean des Esseintes in the rather large house that we can no longer live in.   Often in nights, I wonder around each room in a drunken haze, trying to find where I left the right side shoe, while wearing the left.   It would be comical if it wasn’t so tragic.  I do have a room where it is devoted to the image of me as a child.  When I was a baby till I was 10, I was often photographed by my father, as well as by his friends.  Due to that, institutions like the Getty own the negatives that feature my presence on film.  If a friend didn’t send me some photos through the miracle of the I-Phone, I would never have them.  I barely recognized myself when I looked at photos that were taken 50 to 55 years ago.   Now, when I look in the mirror I think, as I often do, I wonder what happened to that little boy.   

As I write, I have two scarfs around my neck, a sweater, and a long bath robe.  Today, I’m sad, because it’s the last Sunday of the year 2015.  What have I done?   Where am I going?   And perhaps the most interesting question, who are you?   It is time to get on my horse, and wander off to the sunset at the end of the road.   I’ll be around.  If you need me, all you have to do is put your lips together and blow.  Till then, farewell.  

The Sunday Series: Sunday December 20, 2015

The Sunday Series:

Sunday December 20, 2015

My depression is starting to bore me.   I keep waving my arms above my head to ward off the dark cloud that seems to be around me at all times.  I’m actually a bit shocked that others don’t see this cloud.  Perhaps they are just being polite.  Or maybe they are mistaking it as my hat.  If you’re looking at me from a great distance, one may think it's a hat.    

Since my days are numbered why not go to the most expensive restaurant in town.  I notice that food or beverages doesn’t have any taste anymore.  Is it just me, or is it just a total texture thing now?  Visually, seeing the food in front of my face makes me happy, but once I put the ingredients in my mouth, it is almost a crushing disappointment.  One would think that a beautiful warm piece of apple pie from here would taste what it looks like.  But it seems to be cardboard, and not good tasting cardboard mind you.   The only taste I have in my mouth is for the pretty waitress who served me a vodka dry martini with olive.   The thought of her actually makes me feel drunk, where the drink itself, is basically nothing.  No effect on me at all.  It is like I have a fortification within me, and nothing gets through the wall.  The only thing that gives me any pleasure is the thought of a glory hole in this wall.  Alas, it is nothing, just a thought.

After dinner, I wander out to Park and Sunset Blvd.  I waited for the 603 line to take me home on the corner of Alvarado and Sunset.   It seems like any other evening in my life.   It is very hard to see the stars from the bus stop, oh I don’t know why?  Perhaps due to the street and building lighting.  Then I remember, there are no stars when there are clouds. My bus approaches and I get in.  I use my TAP card, and go sit in the back of the bus by the window.

 I like to watch the buildings and structures go by as the bus moves forward.  The one thing I have noticed is the difference between the Dov Charney billboards and the one’s after he was fired from his company “American Apparel.” They are still sexually enticing, but not as nasty and dirty as under his personal supervision.  I often believed that he himself took these photographs of slightly underage girls, perhaps in a studio, but in my mind, they are taken in his home.  The awfulness of his vision of young girls wearing his clothing is shameful. Yet, that is why I was attracted to his images on the billboard in the first place.  Now, they sort of look like his work, but declawed to a certain degree.  Perhaps it's justice or karma of some sort.   In all honesty, he sort of ripped the images of Terry Richardson's portraits of women.   That is the nature of the advertising world.  One takes an image from another place, and just put your brand on it.  It’s like cattle rustling in the wild west.  You find a cow roaming freely, and you capture it, and put a hot brand on its skin.  You now own the property that is branded.  Charney’s aesthetic or brand image is totally immoral, which a dirty image should always achieve to be as -something shameful.   Oddly enough, it is his images of women that break through my heavy fog that encompasses me.  

The woman on the billboard disappears, and then it’s one warehouse after another.   The landscape becomes blank, which is dangerous, because this is where I project the images from my head onto the dark landscape.   Dark feelings turned into abstract shapes.  The warmth of the bus, just reminds one how cold it is outside the vehicle.   I leave the bus, turn my collar up and walk to the house.  I enter and think “ It’s a Sunday, like all other Sundays.  Oh bloody hell Sunday. ”

The Sunday Series: Sunday December 13, 2015

The Sunday Series:

Sunday December 13, 2015

My job is to basically reflect on life, and unfortunately it doesn’t pay.   I have a deep interest in the world around me, or how I see that world.  To be perfectly honest the world can easily exist without any input by yours truly.  Yet, I have known people, who wait to hear from me, before they enter such a world.  My problem (and it is mine alone) is that I can’t get a regular paycheck for my writings on such an interesting landscape as what is out there.  “There” being whatever is not within my world.   

My ‘world’ is one where I take long baths and focus my thoughts on the bathroom wall.  I notice the cracks in the wall, and I immediately think of them as examples of deep distress that is around me, but quite honestly, not in the bath with me.  The bath is a no-zone.  My sense of being is how hot the water is, and is there enough shampoo in the bottle?  Other than that, the crack on the tiled wall is my total concentration on what that scar means to me.  

Due to my poor eyesight, the crack has many dimensions attached to it.  I often think of it as an island among the blue sea, since my bathroom tiles are in that color.   What is the consistency that makes such an image to be so profound?  I imagined Commander Perry as he approached Japan’s little island, Izu Ōshima, in 1854, that is two hours away from Tokyo on a jet boat, but still, such a remote island.   It has an active volcano, and five restaurants on that island that if full of abandoned cats.  What one would think of as a stalled car engine is actually a wave of sound of cats’ purring in unison.   Feline’s urine can be smelled in the exotic landscape on the island.  Houses left abandoned and the numerous monuments for people who had either died due to plane failure or landslides are scattered in the most remote and public areas on Ōshima.   I loved the island, because the intense rains served my mood perfectly.  Almost as good as being in my bathtub looking at the island of Izu Ōshima on my blue tile. 

The words I write are as useless as the soap bubbles from my shampoo as it mixes in with the bath water.  They too become islands in the sea of Tosh’s bath water.   Real depression hits me when I undo the drain and watch the water empty into a pipe that leads to a filthy sewer.  Whatever happens, there is always the sewer.  No one can lie to that space, because I think the stink and filth is very much part of our DNA.  

I dry myself, put some cream on my face (to even out the worry lines on my forehead and mouth area) and then I dress very carefully.    First the underwear, then the socks, a stripped t-shirt (since it’s Sunday, I choose a navy blue strip against white) and a sensible pair of walking shoes.   I then approach my MacBook Air, and try to enter into the adventure.  

The Sunday Series: Sunday December 6, 2015

The Sunday Series
Sunday December 6, 2015

I’m offended when people treat me like if I am Mr. Peepers.  I do tend to read and wear glasses. But that doesn’t mean I don’t go to the dark world every so often.   There is a website called “Red Tube, which is a porn site.  It’s not really the actual sex that turns me on, but the situation that the girls are placed in.   There is a series of videos called “Calendar auditions, ” where the producer (or he works for the “company”) invites women to his office where he interviews them for a job as a greeter for an online calendar website.  She is supposed to say “Hi guys, I’m so-so, and have a nice day.” She is then required to spin around, show her ass a bit, and that’s it.  The producer basically seduces the woman and has sex with them in front of his camera.  I have seen at least ten of these videos, and all of them have really attractive girls in them.   Also, every one of them is exactly the same.  Even the same dialogue.

For one, I’m fascinated with the actual location where these segments are filmed.  They are either in an abandoned office space, or in some funky apartment that has no personal items whatsoever.   There are blank walls, and usually a bed and that’s it.  The one’s that take place in an actual office is just a table and a leather couch.  Again, very minimal.   I get the impression that the office is located in a big building, which probably has security on the ground floor.  

The video starts (always) focusing on the shoes of the producer.  He’s holding the camera and never stops holding the camera even when having sex with the girl. If the girl is hesitant, he comes up to her and with her permission he touches her cheek.  Time-to-time, he would have the girl hold the camera, mostly on her face, when he is either doing her from the behind, or going down on her.   The actual work desk has nothing on it.  No laptop computer or pen or pencils.  Totally and absolutely nothing. Every video, he has sex with her on or by the table.   The one’s that take place either in a hotel or apartment. Also totally blank.   There is nothing to look at, except the girl.  Every time I see the decor, I wonder what the models thought once they entered the premise.  All of them are nervous. Like they know they are entering a place that they shouldn’t have.

This is where I have to admit something.   I’m totally turned on.  Yet, totally repulsed as well.   I have always read, and this, mostly in the mainstream media, about how some male, got a girl to come to his location, and somehow convinced them to do sex, and then eventually, this person posts the footage of the sexual activity online.  That is beyond disgusting.  On the other hand, I’m glad that I don’t do these things. But I’m attracted to these types of videos where these things happen.   I hate myself after watching them, but….

You know, you're in front of your computer, and you may have a drink or two, and let your fingers type away - and bingo, you end up on the Red Tube site.    I make sure no one is looking at me while watching the videos.  I can never understand the enjoyment of watching porn with another.   Sex is such a private manner, and that includes watching pornography.   It’s a world that is not this world.  There are meditations where you place yourself on a beach, or in the forest. Perhaps even in a hot bath, where trouble just melts away.  Porn, if done properly, will take you to an area in your life, where your mind can explore the darkness within you.   It is not even a release, but a promise of a journey of sorts.  As your eyes wander over her body, and as your host in the video, is doing what you would want to do - the feeling can leave you both depressed and of course, shamed, at the same time.  The thing is, you will realize that there is not a better tomorrow.

As a citizen of this world, I have become attracted to things I shouldn't be.   For one, I live in a world that says "No" to anything that is provocative.  To taste the unknown, and swallow it down, so that one becomes part of what is forbidden, is part of the pleasure.  Am I happy about this?  No.  In fact, I hate myself for even thinking of such a thing.  Yet, what is there or what 'can' be there, can easily be here.  What I want is a workplace that has nothing on the walls, a desk with nothing on it, and a video camera or two.  I would make and arrange appointments.   All vague.  Yet, we tend to wander without a map.   We follow our desires to the strangest places.

The moment I feel free is when I’m watching videos from RedTube, and thinking about my workplace and how it can be effective as a location for pleasure.   A pleasure that will never come to me, but often desired.   I watch Red Tube, and therefore I am.

The Sunday Series: Sunday November 29, 2015

The Sunday Series:

Sunday November 29, 2015

“Twink” is a gay slang meaning a young man who looks younger than he is, and physically usually has no body or facial hair.   Twink is also a British musician, who released a solo album called “Think Pink, ” which was recorded in 1969 and released in 1970.  Listening to it in 2015, one can easily think “oh such a 1969 album.” Loose jams and British hippie abandonment are a wonderful way of spending a Sunday.   On the other hand, I have always regretted that I didn’t look like a “twink.”  

I have a lot of body hair as well as a headful of hair.   The head part is OK, but why do I have such a heavy beard?  It is such a wrong look for me.  Besides my terrible looking teeth, I can see people, when I first meet them, looking at my beard or what is left of it.   I tend to need to shave twice a day.  I even went to the barbers to get a proper and professional shave, and by the end of the day, I still have a shadow on the lower side of my face and the entire neck.   The biggest insult is when I asked for them to shave the back of the neck area, and he asked me how far down did I want to go for the shave?  

The irony is that I’m obsessed with “Twinks,” and at the age of 61, I want to be a “twink.” There is a “twink” code that is in place, especially on the Internet.  For instance, “c” is for the color of hair.  “i” is for length of hair. “h” is regarding hair on the body, and how much of it.   The most important code letters are “k” for how kinky?  And then there is “e” for endowment.   The twisted thing about all of this is that I’m not even gay.  Yet, I’m obsessed with this aspect of homosexual culture. 

I purchased the album by Twink, “Think Pink, ” thinking it was an album by or about the “twink” culture.  Boy, was I wrong!  With lyrics like “watching dawn give birth to the light, ” I knew I was far away from the land of beautiful looking young men.   Not all is lost, because I actually enjoy this album, and it’s worth the price of this priceless vinyl, that I got one Sunday at the Pasadena College swap-meet.    The album expresses a sense of anarchy.  Yet, lyrically it is very cliche, in that it is set in its time and place (UK).  As I play this album over and over again, it takes me away from the world of the “twink” and into a world of free-love, absurdity, and ‘getting-my-head-together. ' What I originally desire was to be among the “Twinks.” I thought the easiest way for me to surround myself in my world of Twinks, was to go to iconic Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood.  

I went there, but was shocked that there were no young men, but guys who are big, and have even bigger beards.  In other words, they look like me.  And the same age as yours truly.  I haven’t the foggiest idea what my life should or can be.   All I know that this is a Sunday, I have to face the fact that it’s the first day of the week, and more likely a week of total disappointment.  On the other hand, I do own a great album. 

The Sunday Series: Sunday November 22, 2015

The Sunday Series
Sunday November 22, 2015

52.  52 years ago, on this date, was the first time I saw my teacher cry in front of her students.  In fact, it was the first time she showed emotion besides hatred or approval of her classroom students.  They announced the news over the school PA system, and I can see it startled her, and then the tears flooded her face.  I don’t know if it was the shock of hearing the news over the PA system, or the effect it had on my teacher's behavior that early morning on November 22.   Up to that date, and just 9 years old, I never experienced death, either by a human or animal such as a pet.  Nothing died in my life at that time.   Even cowboys didn’t die on TV.  The worst that can happen is someone would knock the hero’s back of his head with a gun butt, or the hero may shoot the gun out of the criminal's hand, but that was the worst that can happen.   After getting knocked on the head and gaining consciousness, the cowboy hero would rub his painful head up and down, and get back to business, which is to fight crime.

As I got older, I did experience death.  But what is strange is the news of hearing a famous person dying compared to someone you know who died.  The death of a friend or an acquaintance is much more abstract than a famous person’s death.    I don’t think I have ever been shocked by someone’s passing, except my dad, but everyone else it seemed not real to me.  Yet, when it happens to the famous, the death is more prominent for some reason.  When someone dies that is close to you, one can’t really share that feeling.  Yet a famous death is often shared in great detail.  If they are even really famous, one can buy a magazine or book devoted to that person’s life and more likely death.  The key thing in these publications is the last photograph of the deceased.  There is an obsessional need to know that there is such a document in place.  The last living presence of that being, as he waves to an audience in the back seat of the car, is shocking enough.  Many years later, I saw a photograph of him in the morgue, and even then, I couldn't believe I was seeing what I was seeing.   To see a body when there is no life in it, is truly shocking to me.   As for a musicians’ death, one hears music being played on the radio, and there may be various tributes being played out on various media mediums, but the death of someone in the family or friend, there is never a PA system announcing that.  

To this day, when I hear “Walking On Thin Ice, ” I think of it as the last recording by this famous musician.  Of course, his passing, brings a certain intensity to the work.   One can even feel that this was the artist’s intent, to have this song as the final message.  The truth is, the artist didn’t know what would happen that night.  It is not always fate, sometimes shit happens for no reason. And like the other individual who was shot, he looked shocking in the morgue photograph as well.  I looked at it, like the others, but I wished I didn't really see that image.  I rather think of him as being alive, not dead in the morgue.  

On November 22, and over time, it looks like a complex series of incidents happen.  There are many theories, and all of them sound possible.  But then again, it sometimes just takes one individual to aim, and shoot, that changes everything.  How big can that change be, due to one man shooting another dead.  The narration needs to be larger.  At the time of the shooting, it was bigger than life. The violence of it was the star attraction that day.  I knew the victim, but only on black and white images printed in the daily newspaper.  I don’t even remember seeing him on television, and I know he is one of the first figures to use that medium for political as well a communicative purposes.

When he was killed 52 years ago, they played out all the angles.  They talked about what direction the bullets came from, and even hinted that it came from more than one location.  It didn’t seem real.  There were so many narratives running through the act of an assassination.   A family member or friend just dies, and that is the end of the story.  But a star or a public figure, the death process and the action is always complicated for some reason.   It is almost like death is too personal, so we need a famous person to die, so we can examine the why, what, where, and how it was done.  It’s not polite to do that when a person we know dies.  We just quietly accept it.

The second time I experienced death on a personal level was when the accused assassin himself was assassinated in front of live TV.  Now that was a real death, and as they re-played the moment he was shot over and over again, one thought “oh wow he was alive at this point, and then when he’s down, he’s dead.” I felt I was watching a bridge between life and death, but I couldn’t make out the architecture of that bridge or walkway.  With respect to the first assassination, I wanted to see it over and over again, in the hopes, I get a glance of that string, road, or whatever it is from life to the other side.  When he was in his car waving at the crowd, he was so alive, and then a few seconds later he wasn’t. That shocked me.  It really disturbed me.

When my dad told me that a friend of the family died, and even though I really like this person, I didn’t know how to react to his death.   I felt like it didn’t really happen because I didn’t see it on TV.  My father’s words were not enough evidence to me that he died.  Especially since we didn’t go to a memorial or funeral for this person.  The shocking thing is that he was perfectly fine the last time I saw him.   He didn’t give out any death vibes at all.  It was really confusing.

As one gets older, more famous people die.  That is the weirdest aspect of age, is that you make note of all the TV, movie or music stars are dying on a regular basis.   Each death of a TV series actor from the 1960s or 1970s immediately takes you back to that time when you were in front of the TV set.  Due to the fact that their character, which I didn’t know was any different from their actual lives, was projected on your consciousness due to being in front of the set, seems to have more meaning for some reason.   Often on Facebook someone posts a notice a certain actor or singer has passed, and I automatically put a “like” to that post, not due to the fact that I like that they died or they’re dead, but to acknowledge that person’s observation on that star, as well as a tribute on my part by ‘liking’ that post.  It’s a strange thing to acknowledge one’s death by just liking a post.  But there you go, a passing of time is often shocking in itself.

The Sunday Series: Sunday November 15, 2015

The Sunday Series: Sunday November 8, 2015

The Sunday Series:

Sunday November 8, 2015

Today this Sunday, I went into a very dark room to see “The Forbidden Room.” The Egyptian Theater in downtown Hollywood is a structure that was built-in 1922.  The first film projected on the screen at the theater was Douglas Fairbanks’s “Robin Hood.” It was also the first “Hollywood Premiere.” Today is another sort of premiere, where they will project “The Forbidden Room, ” which is on 35mm, and afterwards the filmmaker will burn the only existing print.   The director, Guy Maddin” made this work as a tribute to the films that were made and are now lost.  It has been noted that 90% of films made in the silent era are nowhere to be found.  Mostly due to the chemical in these movies was nitrate film, and that type of the film is highly flammable.  Also it was in practice to destroy film prints, when they were seen as not having any commercial value. 

Guy Maddin in his introduction mentioned that “The Forbidden Room” is an homage to films that no longer exist, but at one time, did.   He felt frustrated that not only were these works of cinema were lost to history, but also the fact that he wanted to see these films.  In his mind, he needed to re-make these film-works so he can watch them.   In a similar fashion of Mary Shelley making her Frankenstein monster out of used parts, Maddin and his assistants and co-director remade films out of memory or what one can presume is memory, but in reality it is a re-imagine of a work that once existed.   Maddin realized that to make this work as not only something that exists, but he also would have to make it something that once existed.  Therefore the one and only showing of “The Forbidden Room” took place this Sunday morning.

The soundtrack to “The Forbidden Room” is a compilation of memories as well.  Snippets of movie soundtrack filtered through a ghost’s sense of importance.  One can hear traces of familiar melodies, for instance Wagner, but it fades into the background as one watches the larger images on the movie screen.  “The Final Derriere” by the band Sparks is a touching part of the scene where the main character has a desire to touch and obsess about a woman’s ass.   He goes to a doctor to get a cure, and with his head split open and his brain being operated on, he now has great hopes to be free from his desire.   Alas, there is no escape from desire.  A woman’s ass is the entrance to heaven.  Only a fool would attempt to fool his sense of direction.   The same can be said for me, as I waited in line to see this film.   There are no exits once you enter the theater of dreams, known as the Egyptian. 

The smell of burning celluloid as Guy was in the projection room destroying the film  within the film cans after showing the work.  One could notice the smoke in the audience as it lingers towards the ceiling and every once in awhile, the projected light captures the texture of the smoke.  Projected and real life became one in that instant. 

After the showing, one could really feel the smoke.  Guy came out of the projection room holding a bucket of ashes, as he went through the audience going towards the front of the screen.   He mentioned that what is in his hand is the latest work from him, and therefore it will be the last screening of “The Forbidden Room.” In true spirit of lost films, this film is now only exists in one’s memory.  The experience of such a showing can last forever, and there will always be a Rashomon effect, where everyone’s memory will be different.  Just trying to remember the images and the soundtrack to the film is already fading in my brain.  Yet, the experience of living through such a screening, and its after-taste, surely will stay with me forever. 

The Sunday Series: Sunday November 1, 2015

The Sunday Series

Sunday November 1, 2015

Sunday.  Dumb-day.  No-day.   All-day just thinking how boring Sunday is.  The relaxation of a whole population is perhaps the most negative aspect on what many consider to be the first day of the week.  To greet the new week in such a fashion, is like running full-force against a brick wall.   The only saving grace for me, is that the Downtown Library is open from 1 PM to 5 PM. At least in those four hours, there is a sense of bliss compared to the agony of the other 20 hours that exist on a Sunday.  I’m always shocked when I see the importance of “nothing” on our culture.   The blankness of the day, and I guess the fact that we don’t even get mail delivered on Sunday is a blessing to some.  A day without getting a bill.  Then again, I do see postal trucks around town delivering more likely Amazon “Advantage” purchases.   To be a consumer on a day off is like the work itself.

So boring, even dogs take a day off, and force their owners to walk them around the house.   I wonder if it’s the dog or the owner that makes the decisions in the household.  I suspect that a dog has a seductive power over the human, and therefore a master/slave relationship is at work.  From my window I see a pretty girl walking by with her dog, and I think “lucky pup.” As for me, I’m drinking the last bottle of Trader Joe’s “Charles Shaw” in the house, and wondering what happened to my finances.  Where did my world go.  “Do you remember Walter?” I don’t think he does, or his senile brain is thinking of memories that are made-up, and sadly, I’m not part of the big picture in his life. 

It is a day after Halloween.  I dressed up in a costume on one will ever figure out who it is.  Me.  The truth is, I have always worn a halloween costume, but no one has paid that much attention to it.  When I close my eyes, I have always taken on the role as the murderer.   It is the only profession where I felt suitable to be in.   In my private notebook, I have kept a list of people who I wanted to do away with.    In alphabetical order by last name.  Men and women, but oddly enough, more men are listed in my list of people of the soon-to-be-past.   I don’t know why I’m so gender-orientated.  I have heard from others, that they think of me as a homosexual.   I do admire Ronnie Kray, but who wouldn’t, with his good taste in glass eye-wear.  

As I sit here, getting slowly more drunk, I think of the opportunities I turned down, either due to fear of change, or the fear of not getting back from where I came from.  My whole world is really here, sitting by the round dining table, marking time, by doing nothing except drinking, if the worst, at the very least, the cheapest wine on the market.   One man’s high is another man’s hell.   I want to wish you a very happy Sunday, for those who take the day as a reflection or mediation.   As for me, I like to be medicated before I even put my foot down on the cold bedroom floor before leaving the bed.  

- Tosh Berman

The Sunday Series: Sunday October 25, 2015

The Sunday Series:
Sunday October 25, 2015

The eyes show your soul and the mouth shows what you’re really are.   I have a mouth of broken teeth.  Some are from decay, mostly due to fighting.   I have a face that people want to punch.  It’s odd, because I’m by my nature a very quiet man.  I never want to cause trouble onto anyone, yet, people seem to have great pleasure in hitting me in the mouth.   After getting hit, I never feel the pain, just a numb sensation that something has changed within me.   The first awareness is having your tongue go over the wound and the jagged surface of once where a tooth was in place.

Losing a fight is not a problem with me, but the vanity aspect of having my appearance changed, and therefore exposing a side of me that I wish was hidden from the public - especially from the females.   The first thing one looks at is the mouth, and you can see people judge one by how that area of the face looks.   I do it all the time, especially with strangers.  If they have a strange set of teeth, I wonder why.  I then imagine them if they had proper choppers, instead of the mess that’s in their mouth.   So why would anyone think of me differently.  A scar sometimes shows character, but a broken tooth is just what it is - a sign of failure of some sort.

I have to imagine what it must be like for a woman to kiss me with her tongue.  I have a chipped tooth that is sharp as a blade.  I often cause my lip to bleed when I’m deep in thought while reading a book, and all of sudden a sharp pain comes up, and I can taste the blood from my lip.   I have a fear of causing a puncture of a woman’s lips because of the teeth.  In fact, there is usually not a moment when I’m not thinking of my teeth.

I have often had dreams of losing a tooth, and it’s odd to lose that specific tooth in real life.  Due to the nature of my mouth, if one tooth is gone, it changes the entire landscape that is in my mouth.   In my dreams, I have noticed that there is a tooth missing, but I’m with a beautiful woman, and I’m hoping that she won’t notice the missing tooth in my mouth.   Then there is a feeling that she is aware, but not saying anything.  In fact, she is making some sort of judgement against you, or wondering why you don’t get your teeth fixed.   I feel the anxiety of poor dental care, not due to pain, but what others think of me.

Since I can’t afford a dentist, and on top of that, all of them are suspicious to me.  They all resemble that doctor I have seen in countless noir films, where the criminal is on the run, and he gets wounded - and someone calls a doctor at 3 AM in the morning, and they show up in some abandoned warehouse.  Well, that is what a dentist looks like to me.  For some reason or another, they don’t seem to be the same as an official or licenced medical doctor.  I don’t fully understand why they are different, or one needs a separate insurance policy for dental services.

Nevertheless, I neither have dental insurance or the money to pay for such service.   Therefore I decided the best thing to do is actually painted my teeth black.  I’m fascinated with Japanese women who blacked out their teeth.  They call it “ohaguro.” In the Meji period, aristocrats would have blackened teeth.   It seems my major problem is not the teeth, but I was born in the wrong culture, class structure, and of course, time.   But here, in Los Angeles, and on a Sunday, it is a dental problem.

I have read that Japanese military commanders who were hit in the face or head, would wear women’s make-up to disguise the scarring of the face.  On top of that, they would dye their teeth black.   Since I now feel disfigured by the gap in my mouth, I decided to dye my teeth as well.  My visual representation was a picture of a Noh mask.   On top of that, I also shaved my eyebrows, due to the fact that they are bushy and grew like a wild weed above my eyes.   If I can’t get rid of the ugliness of my face, at least I can have some power over the results of the violence, I have encountered.  If choice of being disfigured by nature or human violence, I rather do the scarring by my own hand.

There is the feeling that one would want to do a little bit at a time, but the anxiety that is within me will always make it feel like that it’s the main entry-way to my personality and very being.  To do things extreme, will show a sense of character on my part.  To destroy such a beautiful face, will free me in the long time.

- Tosh Berman

The Sunday Series: Sunday October 18, 2015

The Sunday Series:
Sunday October 18, 2015

Sunday? I really don’t get it.   Why is it everyone taking the day off on Sunday? Yet that is the busiest day for me.  I made a pact with myself to write a piece every Sunday, and then posting it on Facebook and on my blog that day.  To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest idea why I even do a “Sunday” post or piece.  It is not like people are waiting for me to write a Sunday piece.  I don’t think my 2,000 Facebook friends are getting excited when Saturday approaches, knowing that there will be a Sunday post by yours truly.    The truth is, 1,500 of those friends don’t even know me.  They could care less if I live or die, or even if I commit a horrific shooting in some part of the world.   But the 500 people out of that 2000 friends, are close friends of mine.

There have been times when I organized a party at my house for the 500 (that is what I like to call the group), and we do things I like to do, like “spin the bottle,”  “bobbing for apples,” and stuff like that.  I also make sure that within the 500, there are absolute beauties in that grouping.   If one spends time going over Tosh’s “friends,” your eyes would pop out.   I can’t tell you the many hours I have spent just going over each Facebook profile, to look at these girls.   The beauty of it is that they know me, and I know them, if you get my “drift.”

The “500," on a regular basis, meets up in a location of my choice. I even made a card up with a thumb up and underneath it says "500 Likes."  Each card also has the profile photograph as well as their name.    We were meeting at my house on a regular basis, but then we decided to rent out a whole restaurant, or even a small theater, where we do our own theatrical productions.  We don’t make plans, because the “500” is not into plans.  Boring people make plans, the “1,500” make plans, we make chaos.  500 beautiful bodies, souls, all moving into the inner melody that is among ourselves.   All I have to do, to have a good time is basically stuck my tongue out, and for sure, a beauty will capture my tongue and give it a proper message with their tongue.  It never fails, in fact, I usually enter the premise of the party with me sticking my tongue out.

I think our masterpiece is when I staged a version of Hugh Hefner's “Playboy After Hours” TV show.  The beauty of it, is that we based the live setting on a specific show - the one with Soupy Sales as guest.   I had each member of the 500 club memorize the dialogue that took place on the program.   We also did it in real time.  So if the show lasts an hour, then that is how long the live production plays out.   I spent a private and extremely intense time counting the bodies or people that were in that episode, and counted 50.  So 450 of us would watch the show.  I, on the other hand, took the role of Hugh, and I chose one of the beauties in the group, Kim, as my date and sort-of co-host.  It was pretty awesome.

In the summer, the “500” had a party, where all of us were naked.  It was great.  Seeing the images on Facebook, and then seeing these people in person, and better yet, in the nude - oh my gawd, it’s fantastic.  I arranged a game, where one walks into a big room, and all you can see were naked asses.  Their heads and torsos were covered up by a black cloth.  There are seven asses, and we had to match the ass to the correct face that is used in that person’s Facebook profile.  Who would have known?  I totally lost in this game.

The very name “Facebook” is interesting.   We have a need to put our face on a social media platform.  Most of us do so, because we want to connect with another human, or who we think is human.  It wouldn't work if we just showed our sexual gender parts as the profile, or would it?   If I ever fall down in my manor, better known as “The Dumps, ” all I need to do is post my face - and bingo!   At least 500 likes.    And then if that is not enough, you get comments from these people telling how nice you look, and saying they miss you, and so forth.   For me, Facebook is win-win.

- Tosh Berman

The Sunday Series; Sunday October 11, 2015

The Sunday Series

Sunday October  11, 2015

Nothing moves forward unless you yourself become extreme.  Otherwise it is what it always is, and that, is not going to happen.   I started a vegetarian society called “The Friends of Shelley” - named after the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was a life-long vegetarian.   He wrote an essay, “A Vindication of Natural Diet, ” where he pisses on the human that eats animal flesh.   To quote him in this piece: “And man … no longer now/ He slays the lamb that looks him in the face, / And horribly devours his mangled flesh.”  

I went to my local vegetarian restaurant that will remain nameless right now, to protect them from the meat-eaters from that neighborhood, who often shows disrespect to those who choose to befriend the animal than killing them.  I left a notice for those who want to go the extra-step in preserving the animal population, that they should meet me at Echo Park Lake near the closed entrance of the bridge going over the water.   9 people showed up - five of them were women, and the other four were male.   I read them poetry by Shelley, and told them that I wanted to start a secret society where we devote ourselves to the vegetarian lifestyle and to acknowledge the struggle against the meat-eater, who has nothing but hatred towards us.  

Los Angeles is not so bad. There are various vegetarian restaurants as well as a lot of dining places that have a veggie section on their menu.   What we want to do is eliminate all meat dishes everywhere.  If you allow such a dish to hit the dining table, then that means others will follow.   Also it’s getting harder to have a meal with a meat-eating friend.  To sit across the table and watch someone fill their gaping hole under their nose with the flesh of an animal is perhaps the most obscene thing ever presented to me.   Chewing food seems cruel enough, but to think teeth grinding into something that was once alive, well…

We met at the Echo Park Lake again, but this time at 2 in the morning.  We met in the darkest part of the park where the traffic going by would not notice us.  I had one lit candle, and as usual read Shelley’s poetry to the gang.  It was decided that we will attack all the brand name chain restaurants that feature meat as the main subject matter of their business.   With the help of the Google map, we found at least five fast-food restaurants within a ten mile radius.   We decided to use as a costume for the gang, a clown outfit, and we plan to attack each restaurant by robbing the place and then handing the dough to the customers, and tell them to spend their money on food that doesn’t rely on once living creatures. 

I set up camp in my backyard, where we practiced military maneuvers and sleep on the bushes in the hopes of attracting wild animals.  We feel, or I should say I, believe that if you lay yourself down with an animal, one becomes closer to the beast.  One night I slept on the hill when I felt a breath above my face.  I didn’t respond nor showed fear, but I gently and slowly opened my eye to see a coyote looking straight at me and only inches from my face.  Once we saw that I was alive, he or she was scared.  But I didn’t move, nor changed my breathing. Once he saw that I was alive, and I wasn’t going to attack him or her, he kindly licked my hand.  The tongue was rough, and I gently rubbed my fingers against their paw.  He licked my face, and I licked back.  I gently took the head and placed its mouth on my mouth.  I put my tongue in its mouth and kissed the coyote.  

The next morning, I felt my purpose on this planet became crystal clear.  Me and the rest of “The Friends of Shelley” gang will be committed for the right change, and won’t back down.  One of the texts that we are drawn to is worth quoting fully.  It’s by Voltaire and here it is:

“How pitiful, and what poverty of mind, to have said that the animals are machines deprived of understanding and feeling . . . 

Judge (in the same way as you would judge your own) the behaviour of a dog who has lost his master, who has searched for him in the road barking miserably, who has come back to the house restless and anxious, who has run upstairs and down, from room to room, and who has found the beloved master at last in his study, and then shown his joy by barks, bounds and caresses. There are some barbarians who will take this dog, that so greatly excels man in capacity for friendship, who will nail him to a table, and dissect him alive, in order to show you his veins and nerves. And what you then discover in him are all the same organs of sensation that you have in yourself. Answer me, mechanist, has Nature arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may he incapable of suffering?” - Voltaire

I have a large estate in Silver Lake, and I decided, with the great assistance of “The Friends of Shelley” to start a colony called “Monte Verità.” As a group we “abhorred private property, practiced a rigid code of morality, strict vegetarianism and nudism.” We are also against the institution of marriage, party politics and dogmas.   Due that it is my property, I decided to take the fence down, so wild animals can come in and mingle with the humans.   We, as a group refuse to own pets, because that is slavery in our opinion.  At this time, I have a dog, two cats, and a parakeet.  I released all my animals to the world, and they are free to stay or wander the earth.   And one must remember, “The Friends of Shelley” will not take any prisoners, but on the other hand, we will love you as a brother, sister, or more likely, as an animal. 

The Sunday Series: Sunday September 27, 2015

The Sunday Series:

Sunday September 27, 2015

Well, I was born with everything and I will end up with nothing.   I can physically feel the drain of my finances disappearing, as if it was a personal check written in invisible ink.   The farce that is life, is slowly draining away as well.   I have a fear of looking in the mirror and finding my image gone.    There is a slow leak in my bathtub, and each drop represents my power getting less and less.  I was trying to fix it, but you can't fix something that is fate being written out for you.  I can now understand why friends and even slight acquaintances refuse to see or meet me for a drink.   Why be further reminded of failure?  It is right at this very moment, that I realize what life can be on this planet without me.

The buzz-buzz of the bumble bee, or what is left of the species, will be outside my window, competing with the hum of the early morning traffic.   The sound of people moving from one location to another, not for the sense of adventure, but out of duty.   I close my window, and I can see the one bee hitting against it, over and over again.   The determination to stay on the "program" no matter what, is kind of moving to me, but alas, it's sick.  If there is any happiness for me, it is to be removed from the physical space, and lets myself journey as a spirit.  Even that, I can feel the loneliness of the stores that close their doors as I attempt to enter.   There is no exit. So therefore there should be no entrance for me as well.  

There is something funny about my sadness.   People laugh at it, and that gets me to laugh as well.  I'm so over depression.  It's like the paper you used to wipe up the rain water that came through the house.   Instead of throwing it away, you just let it stay there till it's hardened and mildew takes over.  You can't bother changing the space, so just let nature take care of its own.  

I really want to write a poem.   It's Sunday, and it's either a day that starts off the week, or a reminder that the previous week was one of failure.   I don't go to church, nor do I not drink on Sunday, but instead, I try to dump my head into the thought that is Sunday.  I can't get my head around it.  Why is there a day of the week, where one mediates on their failures?  I have started a manuscript folder that is empty.  Every Sunday I look at the blank white piece of fake computer paper, and wonder "where is the poem?"   So I keep a record of all the empty pages, to remind me that I do try to work, but alas, the brain won't let me forget the darkness that's in my soul.  

At times, I feel the need to disappear into my writing.   If I can somehow take my body and get inside the manuscript, I would be, if not, a better place, but at home.   The brutality of the world is the need for physical comforts, and to be forced away from one's writings, is like the taste of something nasty and not right.  I want to feel right, and therefore I must find the portal to the written world. 

While walking around Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, I went to one of my favorite bookstores "Skylight Books" to purchase a collection of short stories by Emmanuel Bove called "Henri Duchemin and his Shadows."  As I sat at the Brü Coffee Bar, I didn't mean to read a whole story, but I started at the first sentence, and couldn't stop reading till the very end.   All the main characters are male, and too sure of their placement in their world.  Of course, this got me thinking about my problems and how I feel about myself.  Bove, according to the introduction, had a life-time of serious financial mishaps, and I try to imagine myself in his shoes.  In fact, when I look at the ground, and I see my shoes, I think of Bove.  

There is no doubt that I'm heading towards a major fall or breakdown of some sort.  The thing is at this point and time, I need to face up to it, and just either roll with the punch, or if I'm fast enough, must avoid the full hit.   It's odd to read a book and enjoy someone else's suffering. It doesn't make me forget my misery, but somehow enhances the experience as if it was a multi-layered milkshake.  Each bite or drink leads one to another sensation.   The world is not a happy one for me, but nevertheless, it is a landscape that has many textures.  My job is to jump into what is offered to me - both the good and the bad (and to be honest, it doesn't look too good here) and presented in such a fashion, that can hopefully enlighten one.   Or a reader or two.  Or not.